12 - Uncertain times

Summary

No previous offensive since the beginning of trench warfare on the Western Front had achieved the initial success of Operation “Michael.” In a single day the Germans along a broad front ruptured British defenses and advanced across open countryside, killing 7,000 British soldiers and capturing another 20,000. Many British units took flight without putting up much of a fight. In two days, German “mobile” and “attack” divisions advanced an incredible forty miles behind the Somme. William II congratulated the troops and ordered schools closed to celebrate a great victory. He also told his entourage as they drank champagne that “if an English delegation came to sue for peace it must kneel before the German standard for it was a question here of a victory of the monarchy over democracy.”

On March 25 Major General Oliver Nugent, commander of the Ulster division, drew a vivid picture of the collapse of his front for his wife:

It is all a ghastly nightmare. I cannot credit that it is only 5 days ago that we were holding the trenches just in front of St Quentin … My men have had no food, some of them for 2 and 3 days. They have had no sleep for 5 nights. They are absolutely beat … This is truly Armageddon. Unless we can finally stop the German attack soon, I fear it will be the end … I had to go up to the front and it was a horrible scene of confusion. French and British retiring, guns, wagons, horses and men in most inexplicable confusion, a roar of shelling and machine guns and the very heaviest kind of German shells bursting all round us.